Handbook to the natural history of Cambridgeshire / edited by J.E. Marr and A.E. Shipley.

Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Handbook to the natural history of Cambridgeshire / edited by J.E. Marr and A.E. Shipley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    office for several years at Pembroke Hall. It is moreover extremely unlikely that it should not have bred in the Fens, if it did so in the adjoining counties, the only other interpretation to be put upon Turner’s words. About fifty years later Dr Thomas Muffet corroborates the fact to some extent (cf. Yarrell, Hist. Brit. Birds, ed. iv. p. 180), and indeed it is perfectly certain that the bird was quite common in early times in Britain, when it was a frequent quarry for a Falcon. King John, for instance, procured seven individuals at Ashwell in this county in December 1212. The Crane occurred at all seasons of the year, and was met with in large flocks until after 1678, though at that date Willughby tells us that he was unable to record an instance of its nesting. The exact date of its final disappearance as a breeding species, and even as an abundant immigrant, is quite uncertain; but Pennant in 1768 concluded that it had forsaken Britain. Bones have been occasionally found in the Cambridgeshire peat and at Lynn in Norfolk. 11. Otis tarda (Linn.). Great Bustard. This fine bird, which was an abundant resident in many parts of England until the beginning of last century, and used at one time to occur also in the south of Scotland, was probably more plentiful in the eastern counties than else- where, and so continued until about 1812, though exact dates cannot be given, and but few individuals remained by that time in other parts of England. The last nests, in Norfolk and Suffolk, were found in 1832, but solitary hens seem to have dropped an occasional egg at random for some six years later. The use of the horse-hoe for weeding purposes after the corn began to be sown in drills is said to have been the final cause of extermination in Norfolk, but the cultivation of lands that were formerly waste, and the extension of plantations, must have greatly reduced the numbers of the birds there and elsewhere. Newmarket and Royston Heaths were well-known resorts of the Bustard in olden times, 6—2